Missing mail raises questions about postal facility

Sunday

Jan 20, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Aaron Nicodemus ON BUSINESS

Mark Doyle is wondering where some of his mail has gone.

Mr. Doyle, owner of AutumnColor Digital Imaging Inc. in Webster Square in Worcester, says three packages from Hawaii and three separate payrolls from a Leominster-based payroll company have been lost in the mail in the past two months. He has had six credit card bills go missing as well.

“It seems random,” he said of the mail that has gone missing to his company, which specializes in reprinting museum-quality photographs. “It's not like it's late. It just disappears.”

Puzzled, and not getting any answers in Worcester, he and a fellow employee went to their respective home post offices in Leominster and Uxbridge and asked postal employees what might be going on.

Those postal employees each said separately that there are major problems brewing inside the Central Massachusetts Processing and Distribution facility in Shrewsbury. Could be a disgruntled employee, they guessed.

Or, it could be a lack of management oversight, because the manager has not been at the facility full time since September. That was confirmed by a postal union official I spoke with.

Mr. Doyle has a case number for his complaint, but it hasn't gotten him a resolution. He's been calling, over and over, and getting no answer.

“It's frustrating as hell,” he said.

I spoke with a representative of the American Postal Workers Union AFL-CIO Local 4553, who told me that a management upheaval at the plant may be responsible for the problems.

I asked him if some postal employee, disgruntled by the possible closing of the facility, are purposefully hiding mail?

“I can guarantee you that that's not the issue,” he said.

There is a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of everyone who works there. The facility has been on the USPS chopping block for several years. Last year, the USPS announced the facility would stay open until at least February 2014, when the final round of facility closures will be completed. We should know later this year if the 1,340 employees at the plant will be laid off, or transferred to facilities in Boston and North Reading.

The plant prepares mail for 93 post offices, which serve 524,504 residences and businesses each day in an area that stretches from New Hampshire to Connecticut and Rhode Island and from the Quabbin Reservoir area to Boston. Statistical probability says that the facility would lose some mail in that huge volume.

Christine Dugas, a USPS spokeswoman, said that the postal service has called Mr. Doyle, and called his office again last week when I started asking around.

“We're working to resolve the customer's issue,” Ms. Dugas said, adding that the complaint against the Shrewsbury facility was the only one the USPS was aware of.

As to the management at the Shrewsbury sorting facility, she said, “There is a full-time manager there.” She said she could not comment, because of confidentiality issues, about what had happened to the previous manager.

Ms. Dugas said she encourages any USPS customer who has a problem with their mail service to talk to their local post office or, if that does not bear fruit, call (800) ASK-USPS and ask for customer service, or go to usps.com and fill out an online complaint form.

“We want customers to let us know when there is a problem,” she said. “The worst thing that can happen is there is a problem and no one tells us. We can't fix the problem if we don't know about it.”

“By UPS or FedEx, because you can get tracking numbers,” he said. And there's somebody at the other end of the phone who can track its progress, and tell you the last place the private company handled it.

•A quick follow up to one of my recent columns:

I already reported that the Yeshiva Achei Tmimim synagogue and Yeshiva Academy school at 22 Newton Ave. has been saved from seizure from the IRS, at least for the time being, after no one bid at the IRS auction of the building. There is still $472,000 worth of liens on the property.

My initial column went viral within the online Jewish community, picked up by news agencies in the U.S., Europe and Israel. The Save the Yeshiva website was launched after leaders at the Worcester synagogue realized they might capitalize on the worldwide attention the story received.

But the synagogue's online fundraising efforts have hit a wall. The Save the Yeshiva website raised more than $43,000 quickly, in the attempt to raise $500,000 to help pay off its debts. As of late last week, though, that number had only climbed to $53,260.